Pittsburgh 2018

2018 FTP Convergence at University of Pittsburgh Law School, June 8 – 11
Once again, the Fight Toxic Prisons Convergence will occur in June. This year we will gather in Pennsylvania to highlight abuses documented by prisoners across that state, including repeated instances of contaminated water, black mold and toxic land adjacent to, or directly underneath, PA prisons. This state is also home of the political prisoners from the MOVE organization, who have long advocated for organizing at the intersection of movements surrounding prisons and ecology.

Pennsylvania has been the home of many prisoner-led struggles against mass incarceration, for prisoners’ rights and for environmental justice. A convergence in this state will allow participants to learn from this, in particular, lessons from prisoner activists and jailhouse lawyers in SCI-Fayette, SCI-Mahanoy, SCI-Frackville, SCI-Graterford, SCI-Dallas and SCI-Forrest, to name a few.

Additionally, PA has hosted a fierce resistance to the fracking onslaught over the past decade, with direct action to halt pipelines, drilling sites and other oil and gas infrastructure from destroying forest habitat and human communities alike.

Being in PA also puts us geographically between the Mid-Atlantic metropolitan hubs and the rural communities of Appalachia. The convergence will draw from the experiences of both the urban areas heavily targeted by the police state and remote regions that have been turned from coal company towns to prison towns. As in years past, we will seek to coordinate call-ins from prisoners.